As many of you know, we buy and give away many copies of the book STRENGTHSFINDER 2.0.
We do that because we believe the Gallup organization has come up with a terrific solution to a problem that has troubled and stalled many people for many years.
The Problem: focusing on people’s weaknesses.
Our exposure to ‘focus on weakness’ may have started in our family home when we were infants or toddlers. Or, our exposure to ‘focus on weakness’ may have started when we met our first teachers. Or, it may have started at the hands of neighbourhood bullies. Or, it may have started when we joined the workforce and received our first performance appraisal. The point is it happened. If we happened to be among the fortunate few who received a balance of positive/supportive feedback to offset the ‘focus on weakness’ then…we are among the fortunate few. Most people have received much more negative feedback than positive feedback. Most people have become accustomed to focusing on weaknesses…their weaknesses, other people’s weaknesses, employees’ weaknesses, etc.
And, that’s the Problem.
The Solution [at least one big piece of the Solution]: focusing on people’s STRENGTHS.
How do we focus on Strengths?
Well, according to all the Gallup research, the key is understanding the innate talents that drive and set boundaries on people’s personalities and people’s behaviour. Each person has a unique set of talents. Each person has the ability to use his/her unique talents to generate great performance of certain actions…not all actions, just some actions.
Marcus Buckingham’s definitions:
Talent: any recurring pattern of thought, feeling or behavior that can be productively applied
Strength: consistent near-perfect performance of an activity...with passion
When we know our talents – I mean when we really know the details of our talents – we have the ability to understand our Strengths and our weaknesses. And, we have the ability to spend as much time and effort developing Strengths aligned with our talents rather than mending weaknesses not aligned with our talents. And – working on areas of Strength delivers more bang for the buck.
When we focus on Strengths we focus on the positives.
When we focus on the positives…people like it…and people tend to embrace positive change.
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